The Wintering

by Joan Williams

  “But I don’t want to be spared, Jeff,” she said. “How would I learn then, as you did? I don’t want to go around being unthinkingly happy.”

  “All right,” he said. “But if I can’t spare you unhappiness, don’t let me cause you any.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” she said. “Don’t you.” Reaching up, she brushed the back of her hand against his forehead, lined with perspiration. Then, through trees, he glimpsed what he thought was water, shining. Was it a pond? Squinting in the direction he pointed, Amy thought so. Bringing things from the car, following one another along an overgrown path, they came out on a bank strewn with willow trees. Almoner gave Amy a lesson with his fly rod. She was more successful than she ever had been before, but they caught no fish. It was the wrong time of day to fish and too hot. “But, at least,” he said, putting away the rod, “I’ll go home with my line wet. Around evening, somebody will have a string of fish I can buy.”

  They went deeper into the woods, where it was cooler. And though neither of them was hungry, they unpacked Jessie’s lunch and ate lackadaisically. Soon, in the heat, sandwiches left exposed began to dry, their edges to curl. Amy sat balanced on a tree root, running a cold can of beer over her face before drinking. Almoner carried a can of beer with him, pacing. Not even a bird sang and nothing else moved. His feet went soundlessly over pine needles but occasionally cracked open an acorn. “I had a speech all arranged,” he said, “in case you were mad about the changes I made in the story you sent me. And thank you for all your letters, Amy. They help keep me going. They are so beautiful but heart-wrenching, too. They make me want to leap onto a white horse and rush to your house to save you. And I feel so damn helpless being able to do nothing.”

  “You do something. I can always reach out to you,” she said. “I’m sorry to write you always sad letters. You have enough sadness. But that seems to be always the way I feel. I know that story’s not good. And how could I be mad at any corrections you make? I only get mad at myself, for not being able to do better. And for not making myself work more.”

  “Before, when I’ve made corrections in your things, you said you were afraid the work wasn’t yours then. I keep telling you it is. We’ve all learned from someone else, you know. Maybe only by reading, but we learned somehow.” They were both startled as a twig snapped beneath his heel.

  After looking around, Amy said, “Tell me the speech anyway.”

  He emptied his beer can and said, “It’s about giving and receiving and not being afraid of either. Though giving is the hardest, particularly when people don’t want to accept what you have to give.”

  Amy began immediately to collect acorns into a little pile about her feet, looking down at them; her voice was low. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I just don’t feel that way. And it’s not,” she said, looking up, “because you’re too old. I just don’t feel that way.”

  He bent the beer can and tossed it to the ground. “I’m not pressuring you, am I?” he said. “I’ve waited a year. I can wait as long as it takes you to grow up.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “How can I be mad at a child?” he said.

  She said, concentrating on looking at the acorns, “Every time after I see you, I ask myself why I wouldn’t. And I’m sorry. I think, maybe next time. Then the next time comes, and I don’t want to either.”

  “I only thought,” he said, “that it would be easier for me to help you if there were no more barriers between us. You know I’m not going to force you, and I’m not going to beg either.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she said hopelessly. “And what would I do if I didn’t have you to talk to about the sort of things we do.”

  “Yes, most people don’t understand dealings of the heart,” he said, sitting down somewhat tiredly. “They understand only dealing across counters with money.”

  Amy began abruptly to cry, turning and leaning against his shoulder. His face went down immediately to the top of her head. “Please,” he said. “Please don’t do that.”

  “No one,” she said, “understands me here, but you. I’ve got to go someplace else.”

  “Don’t keep running,” he said. “There’s not any other place. Places don’t matter, don’t count. It’s all inside you.”

  “But I’m so lonely,” she said, sitting up. She accepted a handkerchief he handed her and pressed it to her face.

  “I’ve told you, writers have to accept loneliness,” he said. “That’s a cliché by now. But I think to accept life at all, you have to accept loneliness.”

  “Only when I see you, I’m not lonely. And we can hardly ever see each other.”

  “This secrecy is intolerable,” he said. “And there’s so little time.”

  “Is it time for the bus?” she said, about to get up.

  “Oh no, there’s plenty of time before the bus,” he said. Leaning forward and toward the ice bucket, he drew out two cans of beer, dripping water. He bent over, opening them, and Amy stared at his back, realizing what he had meant by time. Her life, she thought, seemed so full of time, she had no idea what to do with it all.

  He leaned back against the same tree and handed her a beer. After sipping his own, he said, “You’ve come a long way, Amy. And you’re going to grow up some more.” Then he put an arm quickly about her. “Hush. Hush. I didn’t mean to make you cry again. I never want to do that.”

  “But you are so kind to me,” she said, muffled against his shoulder. “And maybe next time I will.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Maybe next time you will.”

  Someone nearby suddenly began to chop wood, and they drew quickly apart. Amy got up and moved away to sit against a more distant tree; she consoled herself by thinking she had been right to refuse. How embarrassing to have been discovered making love in the woods; and the thought that the woodchopper would have perceived them, an old man and a young girl, would not leave her mind. She cringed at the thought of having been discovered, of jumping up and straightening her clothes; even as a child, on outings, she had hated going behind bushes to go to the bathroom, pulling down her pants in the open air. Always, it seemed, she had been dogged one way or another by fear of exposure and discovery. Opposite her, he sat drinking his beer and not looking at her, until she spoke. “I brought a pencil and paper today.” She hoped to lighten their moods. “I was going to ask you a lot of questions. It seems I ought to know everything about your work, but I never ask you anything.”

  “You don’t need to ask those things,” he said. “What you learn from this is enough, Amy.” A wave of his hand took in the woods and meant also solitude and silence. Almost at the same instant, an orange and black butterfly lit on one of Amy’s shoes. She remained perfectly still and hardly dared breathe. “It would be nice,” Almoner said, “to be a butterfly. Come out and fly about and die in a few days. They have no knowledge of death and can’t fear it then. Since they wouldn’t harm anything, they have no reason to suspect harm.”

  “It’s so tiny,” she said. “It seems to have elbows and knee joints.” The butterfly ran a careful antenna over its body, then flew up. Amy drew in a disappointed breath. However, it only drifted onto Almoner’s hand. He held it up with the butterfly resting atop it.

  “It likes me,” he said.

  “Maybe it wants to be a writer, too,” Amy said, smiling.

  Opening and closing its preening wings, the butterfly remained on Almoner’s hand, while he touched it first to Amy’s hair and afterward to her lips; then, it fluttered away with sunlit wings, settling onto one of their discarded beer cans. Pouring beer into his hand from his own can, Almoner held it toward the butterfly, which then flew out of sight.

  “Oh,” Amy said. “I’m afraid we made it mad.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t too disgusted with us,” he said. “It knows we’re only human beings.”

  “What would I have done if I had never met you?” she said.

  “Kept looking,” he said, “as I did. Though, God kn
ows, I’d about given up ever finding you.”

  Twilight came on, and bright green moss beneath the trees leapt out sharply, more brilliant. It seemed a soft carpet to lift up and carry away with them into the growing dark, as they carried the things they had brought from the car. As they stood, the sun’s shafts drew upward and away from them. And into the cooler air, birds began to sing. Their path was fainter. They stumbled, following it again. The sun sank languidly behind the car and across the sun’s path, birds appeared only as black wings. The countryside around them seemed aflame, the fields mellowed. Gullies, in shadows, were like caverns. As they drove back to town, Amy stretched out, realizing she was tired. “It does seem so stupid,” she said, “that we have to hide to sit and talk.”

  “It wouldn’t be comprehensible to many people,” Almoner said, “that two other human beings would want to spend an afternoon sitting and talking, or not talking, as the notion struck them.”

  When they reached town, he parked the car the same distance from the square. Despite lengthened street shadows falling along the sidewalk, the corner where the bus would stop was clearly visible, surrounded by stores with lights on. Negroes, who were waiting on the curb, now bent to pick up bundles.

  “The bus must be coming,” Amy said hurriedly.

  “Next week?”

  “Yes,” she said. “All right.” She leaned across the seat and touched her mouth lightly to his. Then she started to get out.

  “Amy,” he said. “Sometimes I wish you hadn’t written me that letter. My God, didn’t you see what it would mean?”

  “No,” she said worriedly, glancing toward the bus stop.

  “I wanted to save you any unpleasantness or unhappiness you didn’t have to have,” he said. “But I can’t go on fighting like this.”

  “Fighting?” she said.

  “My glands,” he said.

  “Oh. The bus is going to be here.”

  “Run then, damn it,” he said. “Run.”

  “Next week or not?”

  “Yes. Yes,” he said, watching her run.

  Jeff:

  What’s happened? Does your wife know about the day in the woods? She phoned and asked me to lunch. I said I could and then she phoned right back and said she wasn’t coming to Delton, after all. My mother had a fit and said not to write you; the stuff about letters being proof positive. Now, she’s written asking me to lunch there. I don’t want to come but should I? What’s going on? And I did say, Why couldn’t I? Why didn’t I? I missed you afterward. I wish God would help me. Nobody is so dumb and foolish as I.

  Amy

  Dearest Amy:

  I bought crappie from a Negro walking along the road with a string of them, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary when I got home. I don’t know why the sudden telephoning. Intuition? Something could have happened; someone could have seen us on the square that day. What choice do they leave us but back alley subterfuge? They can see nothing else for looking at us cross-eyed. As I was coming from the drugstore the other day, I encountered your aunt, and she looked at me so exactly like Amelia, I was confused for a moment. There’s a difference in the air I can’t put my finger on. Momentous housecleaning began, I in the middle trying to work. But to them I am the only one in the house not doing anything and I’m sent to town for floor wax. Amy, I don’t have time to lose this way. I must finish this hook and soon. Impossible of course, but if only we could go off together and when I had finished working, there you would he with your eyes looking at me as I dream they will, to read the work and say simply, Yes, it’s good, go on. Something as simple as that. Go on, Jeff, I believe in you. And I there to say to you, Yes. We need each other for that. But they’ll leave me alone for a while, because coming back with the wax, I pointed out that time lost that way means money lost. They’ve even had the front hall painted and Inga insisted on new wallpaper and really I have no extra money. Always there are hills. If only we could go away.

  And Amelia’s been going about with a secret air and so I thought, at first, the plan about your coming here was her idea. But now I think her preoccupied air is because she has a beau. She had recently resumed church work with zest, and the choir director, now a widower, has begun to ask her out to dinner. Only I see now, as I’m writing, that Amelia resumed church work shortly after his wife died. Then Inga told me herself, that while the house was clean she wanted to invite you here as her guest to stop gossip. I don’t think the town’s full of it, as she says; rather, I know the town’s full of gossip, but not about us, I mean. But how can I take the chance it’s not? Always, you must he protected. How are they sure we are still in touch? It all goes around in my head endlessly. My work is suffering, and the time lost can never be regained. This time, I’m afraid you’ll have to decide what to do. You see, despite running, you may be forced by all this to grow up, yet.

  Jeff

  While her new employer stared at her legs, Amy tried not to laugh and stared down at his blue socks with gold clocks. Since he wore no garters, the socks’ droopy tops showed when he crossed his legs. He had no more idea than the man in the moon that her alligator shoes cost more than he made in a week, she thought. He kept looking at her insinuatingly as if she must be pleased and as if assuming they would be going out together after work. Did he even realize, she wondered, that there were different kinds of people, that what he might consider life’s highest attainment would have little interest for her. God! if only he would stop looking at her legs.

  A greenish gold tooth on one side of his mouth shone when he laughed. He wiped saliva, afterward, from his mouth’s corners, then stuck thumbs behind his lapels and leaned back and kept staring. A blister on one heel, from walking and job-hunting, made Amy ease off a shoe, which gave him further reason to look. Told at the employment agency that smiling pleasantly would help get her a job, Amy had smiled. Proust, Existentialism, the Renaissance—college courses fled through her mind, pointlessly, now that she was in the real world, out to make a living. His green gold tooth appeared when he told her a joke; he sat wiping saliva on the back of his hand. Suppose she mentioned reading Rememberance of Things Past in French? He would find that as pointless as she had found his joke, Amy thought, having smiled at it. Hired as a receptionist, she need not do much and felt qualified for less.

  At some interviews even smiling pleasantly had not helped. How had others taking the test known, if A talked to B for C minutes at so much a minute, then so many minutes overtime, how much it would cost? The telephone company’s personnel manager had shaken her head in pity. “You got none of the problems right,” she had said. Trying then to smile, Amy had said, “Well, I was a Literature major in college.” But in the elevator she had cried, for the woman’s pity had seemed to be for so much else besides her inability to get the job. Graduated from college, she was not qualified to be a long-distance telephone operator.

  As a receptionist, she was to address envelopes, having clipped from each morning’s paper announcements of births and marriages. Then to the people involved, she was to send a letter suggesting insurance. It hurt that she had not been invited to Quill’s wedding; he would throw away this form letter from some unheard-of company and never know she had typed it. Beating upon the typewriter keys with two fingers, she thought of adding, It’s from me, Amy; here I am, lost! Every day she had been working, her employer had worn the same pair of socks, or did he have similar pairs? Today, he had a run in the shiny material. Tomorrow she would know whether he ever changed them. There was something to look forward to in this job, after all. Picking at something near his gold tooth, he went out to the “Y” for his daily swim. Resentful that he had this freedom when she had none, Amy immediately abandoned his correspondence for her own.

  Dear Jeff:

  Thanks for calling, though unfortunately my mother heard and knew who it was. I’m glad my note was satisfactory and that your wife thought my having a job was a good enough excuse for my not coming there. But the job is so boring and I’m not
learning anything, except that the business world is dull and stupid. I’m sorry about not meeting in the woods again but it did seem scary to do it after she had called. When will I see you?

  Amy

  Dear Amy:

  If it weren’t funny, I’d beat my head against the wall. So often, when we could have been together, we’ve been apart to spare our families so they would be what they think they are, happy; or so at least others would not think they had reason not to be. They’ve forced us to secrecy. They may force us to something like having to go away to be together. Keep at the job for now even if it is boring. People need something to chafe against and particularly artists, as I’ve probably told you. Bear down on your pencil now. Tell yourself that’s how you’ll get out of it all. Start something and stick to it, Amy. I tell myself by working like a mad man, I’ll drive you out of my thoughts for a little while. But you won’t go. You won’t. When will I see you?

  Jeff

  She would see about what was going on in this house, Amelia thought. Jessie was continually going out, frequently letting the back door slam, more than in all her other years here put together, and always wearing white. That did not mean a boyfriend, but she couldn’t be going to that many funerals. Amelia could not think of a single Negro who had died these past few days. And always, what’s-his-name, her nephew was waiting at the end of the driveway. Amelia remembered him as the cutest little colored boy. What had made him turn out so surly? She called, “Inga, was that the phone?”

  “No.”

  Inga’s voice came muffled from the hall closet, where she had found a once-fashionable pink straw hat, its wide brim decorated with cherries. Backing out, Inga closed her eyes against the suddenness of day. In that inward yellow-starred darkness, she had a brief flash of self-assertion, thinking, I live here. Opening her eyes, she stared at the white hall paper Amelia had chosen, after saying the green grass cloth she had wanted was too expensive. But at least, Inga consoled herself, she had made the decision to have new paper, and she knew triumph. Now everything in the house had not been here before she had come. Something seemed hers, one decision anyway. The new wallpaper quickly had become her point of reference; she referred to things as having happened before or after she had decided to have the hall redone. Yet, she thought ruefully, how much had happened before, how little since. Time fled. Looking in the hall mirror, Inga pulled the sadly flopping brim of the hat over her face, then lower.